


A Matter of Trust

by Reading Redhead (readingredhead)



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Community: comment_fic, F/M, Genderbending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-29
Updated: 2010-07-29
Packaged: 2017-10-10 20:38:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/104023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/readingredhead/pseuds/Reading%20Redhead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose Tyler's always known the Doctor as a woman, and when she--he?--regenerates into a male body, Rose begins to question her relationship to the Doctor and her reasons for traveling with her/him. [Set directly after The Christmas Invasion.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Matter of Trust

**Author's Note:**

> Written for juliet316 on LJ as part of the comment_fic community.

The man sitting next to her on the couch was both someone she knew and someone she’d never met before, and it was beginning to drive Rose mad.

She didn’t know what to say to him, and certainly didn’t know what to say about him _being_ a “him” now, and didn’t want to offend—but all she really wanted in this moment was to have _her_ Doctor back, the tall gangly self-assured woman with her disarming smile and northern accent and beat-up leather jacket that looks older than she is, until you look her in the eyes and realize that _nothing_ still living could be older than this woman.

There had been some muttering from her mother, and even from Mickey, at first, when she gave up everything to go traveling with some _older woman_, but Rose ignored all the gibes, or pretended not to hear them, and it wasn’t hard to do so, because simply she didn’t care. She didn’t have words to describe her relationship with the Doctor. It sounded strange to say, “She’s my friend”—that one small word just wasn’t big enough for what went on between them. For nineteen years, Rose’s life had been going nowhere. No one could blame her for leaving with the first person who really made things _happen_. No one could blame her for wanting to be with someone who made her feel so important, so alive.

Rose missed that woman so fiercely in this moment, and everything they had shared. She missed the silly banter across the TARDIS’s consoles as the Doctor threw levers and pushed buttons and sent them whirling out into the universe with that manic grin plastered across her face. She missed the excitement of a new time, a new world, and the way she could hear it in the Doctor’s voice, cheering her up even on the worst of days. She missed the camaraderie, the feeling that she was part of a team, connected to something (and someone) bigger than herself, not just Rose Tyler from a council flat in London, but Rose Tyler, citizen of Earth, traveler of the universe.

Rose didn’t miss the Doctor’s gray periods, that manifested suddenly and without warning and made her wonder, more than once, if Time Lords suffered through the alien equivalent of PMS, along with the ensuing mood swings. It always hurt her to see her friend there, angry and in pain, taking it out on the world because she didn’t feel like she had another option. This new man didn’t seem like he had that kind of brooding in him. But he also didn’t seem like the Doctor.

She couldn’t look at him without wanting to scream, so she stared at the mug full of tea in her hands instead and said, “You never told me this could happen.”

“Well, I—no, I suppose I didn’t,” the man responded. The voice and cadence were still jarring to Rose’s ears. She was used to something different—something better. Something _hers_.

“Were you going to?” she asked.

There was a pause, before he said, “I’m sorry. So, so sorry, Rose.”

She flinched away from the unfamiliar sound of her name on his lips.

“I didn’t know,” he said, and though she didn’t know how to tell from his voice if he was lying—the way she could with _her_ Doctor—Rose thought he sounded like he was telling the truth. “I mean, I knew about the regeneration—but usually, it doesn’t change quite so much.”

“Usually?”

“Almost always,” he confirmed.

Rose closed her eyes and leaned back into the couch, still incredibly aware of the man—the Doctor—sitting just a little less than a foot and a half to her right, watching her and not saying a word. She wondered briefly whether this moment would have been easier if the person sitting beside her still looked like a woman—and was shocked to realize exactly how much easier it would have been. She had shared things with her Doctor that she wouldn’t have with a man, alien or not; she felt some kind of womanly bond between them that this new body had surely and suddenly snapped.

And despite the taunts, at least when the Doctor had been a woman, there had been no real danger of Rose falling in love with her.

“I know this is a lot to take in,” the Doctor said.

Rose nodded. She opened her eyes to find him staring at her, head tilted slightly in thought, that crazy hair standing up every which way. “Yeah,” she said. “It is.”

They were both quiet for a moment, but then the Doctor said, “You don’t have to keep traveling with me, if you don’t want to. You could stay.”

It was something Rose had been thinking about through the whole past day, as they fought off invading aliens and saved the world from sure destruction. She didn’t have to go back with this strange man. She didn’t have to pretend that things were going to be the way they had always been. She could get her old life back; her mum, Mickey, her job, her friends. It wouldn’t be the same, but it would at least be something she knew how to be a part of.

The Doctor still saved the world. That, at least, hadn’t changed.

“No,” Rose said, making up her mind in an instant. “I’m going with you.” She tried to grin, and found that it wasn’t as impossible as it had been a few minutes ago. “After all, someone has to keep you out of trouble.”

And before she could second-guess herself, the Doctor’s face lit up with a wide smile and Rose felt that part of her heart come alive again—not like it had before, but still, there was something there, and it wasn’t something she could ignore.


End file.
